“Man, if I pulled this off it would be the coolest thing since ice cream.”

“Maybe this is more than just an idea.”

“I’ll give it a go and see what happens, no commitments though.”

One night I decided I was going to ride my bike halfway up the country. My friends and I study at university and one night we were chatting about what our plans were going to be during the mid-year break.

There was a whole raft of different suggestions. Some people said they’d be staying at home and having a quiet one. Others were keen to work and earn some money to get themselves out of the poor student stereotype.

Then somebody sarcastically told me that I should ride my bike up to see them in their hometown, which was about 425km away from Wellington in a place called New Plymouth. There was a side to me that was like, “Nah that’s a bit too much,” but the other half of me was like, “I mean… it would be kind of fun to do right?”

There’s a feeling of vacancy that existed for me at this stage. I was so keen to do it but there was a period there where it was all kind of like waiting for the right mindset to get things done. I still don’t know what I was waiting for though. At no stage do you just grow wings and start to fly into battle or anything like that…

So the seed was planted. In my opinion, this is the most important stage of overcoming your challenges. The moment you think to yourself that there is an opportunity that you might be able to pull it off is the moment that anything becomes possible.

The thing that made stuff happen was that excitement factor. There were so many occasions when I felt hugely vulnerable about it. Thinking about all the things that could go wrong, how hard it was going to be, every day was a battle for belief.

But the reason why I believed that it was possible is because I drew on other things that I’d done in the past. Black belt grading’s, endurance bike races, life in general. In my head I kept that belief going. I had to back myself from the get-go in order to believe that I was capable of achieving this challenge.

The plan was to ride my push bike solo from Wellington to Kaitaia, basically the length of the North Island of New Zealand. A 1100km journey over all terrains and likely in all weather conditions. It would be to fundraise for children in the New Zealand care system to do cool stuff like go to Theme parks together, or even go and speak at international conferences like the United Nations.

The creative side of me thought of all the different ways to go about it. Deciding if there were any easier ways of getting it done, trying to find the fastest way of getting the job done, looking at all of the alternatives to paint an image in my head that it was becoming more and more possible.

The biggest reason I did it though was to see what was possible. To venture out into the unknown and test me both physically and mentally. I was prepared to challenge myself to my absolute limits, and it was the most nerve-racking thing I’d ever thought of ever…

I knew it was going to be expensive, I knew that it was going to affect my family emotionally. I’ve had a few chats with different people around the thought process behind doing something stupid and I guess it comes down to having an imagination.

Imagining something crazy is usually a hypothetical thing, I never really thought about the reality of putting my body under so much stress and on one of the most dangerous roads In the country. With trucks going at maximum speed around blind corners, on main roads, I never really believed that it was actually going to happen. In my head it was just an idea, it was just a thought.

In reality, though, I was quietly and patiently getting ready to do something extremely stupid. In my heart, it was already a done deal. It was a case of humouring myself. Having the imagination to think of doing something crazy and having the balls to actually go through with it.

The heart stuff is what I spent most of my energy protecting. Trying to build a resilience to back myself before I’d even told anybody. Kind of like telling you that you’re not allowed to stay up after 9pm and having the innocent guts to actually stretch the rules. That’s a lot of what goes on In the plan to do stage is firstly having the imagination to think of something crazy, and having the guts to protect your idea. Even from your mum.

This is the most difficult stage because it’s an internal battle. I’m not a strong person mentally so it took a lot of strength to have the courage to imagine that I could do something like this but even more kaha, strength, to actually believe in myself enough to give it a crack.

We all have to overcome our challenges in some capacity. Most of the time that is totally a mental struggle of coming to terms with yourself that you actually can do it. For me, this process was almost entirely down to having the creative belief to come up with the bike ride. Constantly being optimistic about it and always remaining positive.

I’m not sure how you would go about planning to overcome your challenges but I know that from my own experience, playing a whole lot of mind games slowly but surely makes it a done deal. Enough that I can feel confident enough to then bring my heart into it and pull off the impossible.

After thinking about all of my options, and making the ride as do-able as possible. It was time to see if I was physically up for the fight. Still keeping it to myself, making sure not to overwhelm myself just to prevent raising any expectations or having the idea shot down. The idea was well planted into the ground and now it was time to grow it from the ground up.

Next time we’ll talk about the physical preparation that was done for this bike ride and some of the smaller challenges that existed. Struggle street basically…